Nationalism and the Global Bible: Investigations from the Arctic, Australia and Oceania, and West Africa

Abstract

What is the relationship between language, nationalism and Bible translation? This essay examines this question in the light of the thesis proposed by the late Adrian Hastings that Bible translation was critical to the emergence of new national identities throughout Christian histories. It considers the Hastings thesis in relation to selected case studies from Greenland, eastern Australia/Oceania and West Africa, examining the extent to which colonial translations enhanced, impeded or complicated the emergence of Indigenous national identities. In Greenland, a national Bible emerged as a crowning achievement for a new national language. In Australia, the Bible translation movement was accompanied by harrowing cultural destruction, including the loss of almost all Indigenous languages in areas of intense settler colonisation and population replacement. In German controlled New Guinea and West Africa, the translation of the Bible by German missionaries underscored the reach of German imperialism. Within the linguistically diverse area of New Guinea, the colonial period saw no project for a single Bible translation to encourage a national identity. In West Africa, the translation of the Bible into Ewe contributed to the creation of a new form of Ewe identity. It is argued that Bible translation was one variable among many in the creation of national identities in the case study regions.